Food hygiene consultant Katy Elliott is celebrating after 100% of her clients have passed their food hygiene inspections. This includes an impressive 97% earning the highest possible five-star food hygiene rating.
Across her six-year tenure as a business owner and hundreds of clients, she's handled everything from immaculately handled kitchens to cockroaches and mice. Before starting her business, which works with a large number of restaurants across the North West, she made healthy meals for nursery children.
From nursery meals to food safety
She said: "I had two children and started doing a bit of cooking from home. Then, when my son went to a day nursery, they fed him sh*t." She began devising healthy meals for children in nurseries, working with nutritionists and scientists. The business was a success until chain nurseries bought the individual ones, as they wouldn't pay for the expensive service. Her company went out of business, but she had fed over one million mouths, delivering nationwide, and became an expert in food safety.
Using her expertise, she started creating food safety systems for local food businesses. A friend asked her to write an easy system because official guidance is complicated. She developed a system that caught on, and now runs 5 Star Food Safety, providing bespoke food safety management systems tailored to each business.
Common causes of low ratings
Katy audits restaurant kitchens and makes unannounced inspections, which she describes as "great fun." She has encountered "cockroaches and maggots. Mice also cause problems - if you have one mouse in your kitchen, you can have 50 behind it." She added that low ratings often "stem from a dirty, lazy head chef. And if they don’t run the kitchen, and they’re just shouting and being horrible, then the kitchen is not well-run."
She has micro-managed a couple of places, and the head chef left within two days because they didn't want to work with her and knew they wouldn't succeed. However, most chefs are proactive because she makes their lives easier.
Speaking about low ratings, she said: "A lot of low ratings are down to paperwork, where they don’t understand. I worked with someone who had a two star rating and the place wasn’t dirty, it was because he wanted to cook a bit differently - but he couldn’t prove what he was doing so his paperwork was really bad."
Katy said she loves her job: "It’s great fun. And I meet lovely people - we have a right laugh and people engage with you because you’ve helped them. It’s lovely to see them flourish and grow and they’re so proud that they’ve got things right. Food hygiene is so important because it keeps the public safe - that’s paramount. You’ve got to be very careful."
